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Sunday, 13 August 2017

ANZAC BISCUITS; probably you might have heard of this Anzac biscuits... which is popular in Australia and New Zealand. Anzac biscuits have been long associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps established in the World War I.These biscuits were made by the wives and women sent to the soldiers' abroad and with those easy ingredients being used are able to well kept during the transportation.And today I made this Oats biscuits is because my dear ex-boss have asked if I could baked or make few recipes using oats.

Place the rolled oats, flour, sugar and coconut in a medium bowl and
mix to combine.

Place the
butter and golden syrup in a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring till
melted. Combine the bicarbonate of soda with the 2 tbsp hot water and add to the butter
mixture. Pour into the oat mixture and mix till combine.

Place
tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto lined baking trays and slightly flatten rounds, with few centimeters apart.

Bake for 8 to10 minutes
or until golden brown.

Allow biscuits to cool on baking trays for few minutes before
transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Friday, 4 August 2017

When my sister's friend gifted us a box of steamed cakes last month, she told us that this steamed cakes (she called it "ma lai koh") is very delicious and told us we must try it.

So when I return home, I message her if she could let me have the recipe eventhough I knew the cakes were bought and order from her friend. And she told me she will try to get the recipe from her other friend.... and am I glad to have gotten this recipe from her!

I have adjusted the ingredients to make the cakes more dense and moist.

Add the 80g caster sugar in a small saucepan. Place the saucepan over a medium heat, and leave it just like that; but keep a watchful eye on it until the sugar begins to melt and turn into liquid. This will take 4 to 6 minutes, do not stir it and just leave it be. When it starts to melt all round the edges, give the pan a swirl,
and leave it on the heat until it turn medium dark amber colour.Remove from heat and slowly and carefully pour in the coconut milk. Place the saucepan back to heat and heat up the caramel coconut milk. Do not let it boil. Remove and add in the 1 tbsp vegetable oil, stir to mix all up. Set aside to cool.

Place the eggs and sugar in a medium size bowl and using your hand mixer on high speed beat the mixture till becomes thick, pale and fluffy. On slow speed, add in the flour mixture.Using your spatula, add in the cool caramel coconut mixture in. Mix till all combined.

Lightly greased your small mold and pour in the batter till full to the edges.Steamed the cakes 15 minutes on high heat!(Note: I feel letting the batter to rest for 15 minutes resulting better in texture.... but feel free to go ahead to steam it immediately).

Monday, 17 April 2017

Time pass real fast and I didn't realise my last post was in October 2016.

Today I'm posting this Coconut Raisin Butter Cookies which is so good that I have to share it out with you!This cookies are very similarly to the Danish butter cookies ! You really got to try this out and I know you will definitely love this!

COCONUT RAISINS BUTTER COOKIESRecipe sourced from Victoria BakesIngredients150g butter100g icing sugar, sifted40g egg yolk 6g vanilla extract 200g cake flour20g potato starch40g coconut cream powder1 tsp baking powder40g freshly grated coconut60g raisins (Soaked with hot water for at least 5 mins, then pat dry. Using your kitchen scissors, snip into small pieces)MethodSift the cake flour, potato starch, coconut cream powder and baking powder together. Set aside.Cream the butter and icing sugar till pale and fluffy.Add in egg yolk and the vanilla paste and beat till well incorporated.Add in the sifted mixture; roughly stir to combine.Add in the grated coconut and raisins. Fold in all well together. Chill the dough at least 30 minutes.Preheat your oven to 160C. Using a teaspoon, place small mounds of the mixture well apart on the baking trays. (Or you may use your ice cream scoop to spoon out the batter and shape it round).Place the baking trays in the centre rack of your oven and bake for 20 - 25 minutes. (I baked my cookies for 20 minutes and off the oven; I let the cookies in the oven for another 10 minutes. This will make the cookies more crispy and crunchy).(Feel free to adjust to your baking taste accordingly).

Monday, 10 October 2016

If you asked me which is my favourite cake, I really can't tell you .... I love butter cake, marble cake, sponge cake, pound cake, pandan layer cake, and mixed fruit cake too. They are all my favourites. But there is one cake no matter how many times failure I've encountered, I'm still very adamant trying to succeed and I'm countless how many times I've tried; and that cake is castella cake.

Two years ago I have succeeded baked my first Castella Cake eventhough I don't have that wooden mould at that time. After my success in this cake, I even have modified the cake into a Coffee Castella flavour and I really love it!!

When Zoe of Bake For Happy Kids posted her Castella Cake recently, the word "Best & Fail Proof" just caught my eyes and I would love to try this out as this recipe has an added ingredient of oil inside. Im sure with the added oil would moisten the texture of the cake more and sure enough!

When I bite my first bite of the cake, I was like in cake heaven.... OMG... it was so so so so delicious!!!

Method
Place a baking rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat oven to
180°C / 350°F with NO fan forced.

Line the internal sides of your castella wooden mould with grease proof paper
and wrap around the bottom of the mould to just above 1” height.

(If you
are using a metal loaf pan, fully lined the inside of the loaf pan with
aluminium foil then line again another layer with greaseproof paper.)

Preparing
for the egg yolk mixture:Place the milk, honey and oil in a small saucepan or heat proof bowl. Heat
the mixture in the saucepan with low
heat under the stove or microwave
mixture in the heat proof bowl with short pulses of low power until the honey
dissolves into the mixture. Do not let the mixture boils because the mixture
will cause to curd. Set aside for the
mixture to cool slightly, about 10 minutes.

Place egg yolks and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using your hand whisk,
whisk the mixture turns pale in colour. Whisk
in the honey mixture. Sift the bread flour
into egg yolk mixture and whisk until everything is combined. Set aside.

And
for the egg white mixture:Using your stand mixer or hand held mixer with a whisk attachment, beat
egg whites in medium low speed until foamy. Increase beating speed to
medium and while beating, add in sugar gradually and continue to beat until
stiff peaks form and the meringue look glossy. Do not over beat the mixture.

Using a hand whisk or a spatula, fold in 1/3 of the egg whites to the egg yolks
mixture. You can vigorously mixture the batter together in this stage but after
the rest of the egg whites, please fold in with your spatula gently till no egg
white lumps are visible.

Slowly pour batter into the prepared pan at about 1 feet high. Smoothen the surface and ently drop the pan
onto the kitchen bench from a height of 10 cm to remove any large air bubbles
and do this just once. If you are afraid of doing this, you can use a skewer to
draw a zigzag to remove air bubbles in the batter. You can choose to do either
one of these steps or both but do not over-do these steps.

Place pan in the middle rack and bake for 10 mins. Decrease temperature to
140°C / 285°F and bake for another 60 mins, or until the cake is thoroughly
cooked and must has a nice golden brown top.

NOTE: As all oven temperature differs, please adjust
the temperature and timing accordingly.

Remove
the cake out from oven and invert the cake to a chopping board for 5
minutes. Remove the wooden mould out and
invert back the cake to another plate or a wooden board. Once the cake slightly cool to touch, peel off the baking paper and
wrap the cake in plastic wrap. Place cake in an airtight container or a zip
lock bag and allow it to rest in room temperature to let the cake moisten for
at least one day. (The cake taste best
after it aged a day).

I think I have done good this time and will stick this recipe for life..... hahaha! Look how good the texture of this cake.... it is not crumbly at all ... very spongy absolutely loving it!

This is how I lined my wooden mould.Alternatively, if you do not have the wooden mould, you may use the normal pan and lined the pan like the below two pictures.

Wrap the pan with aluminium foil in 2 layers and lined another layer with grease proof paper.

Using two square pans of 8" and 9", cut out some cardboards and wrap with aluminium foil and slot in between the two pans. The inner small pan, please lined the bottom with grease proof paper (as I have forgotten to cut out the paper to place in to take photo).

* If you are using the above two method of pans to bake the castella cake the timing should be shorter about 45 to 50 minutes. Like I said earlier, different oven temperature would result to different timing too.

Monday, 3 October 2016

Wanted to make this steamed cake for sometime but was so hesitate to have to buy the mould and moreover it is in plastic. But just do not know why I still go ahead to get it. Luckily the moulds was not that expensive ...

Actually it was a picture that I stumbled upon in Instagram that inspired me to make this sponge cake. But that picture posted was in Pumpkin flavour instead of pandan flavour.

Tuesday, 9 August 2016

I'm a big fan of Australia Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules and so does my sister. By just watching these shows you can learn so much of the different type techniques in preparing and cooking the dishes. It is just feeling wonderful by just watching the contestants cooking....

Last year when Emma & Jane of MKR presented their dessert to the judges, the judges gave good praises to their Bombolini (I never ever heard of Bombolini that time). Well, Bombolini or Bombolone is an Italian filled sweet dessert similarly like doughnut balls.

I have bookmarked this recipe since that episode was aired last year and only today I got the mood to make it! Because for this, I specially had to make my homemade ricotta.

Sift the plain flour, bakingpowder and salt into a medium bowl. Add in the sugar. Stir to combined and set aside.Gently in stir in the eggs, ricotta and vanilla. Mix till all combined. Cover the mixture with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 - 40 minutes.

In a heavy deep medium saucepan, add and heat up the oil about 4" deep high in your saucepan (enough to allow your bombolini to float in your saucepan).

Drop a tablespoon of the mixture into the heated oil and fry in batches. Fry till crisp and golden brown; and cooked through.

Drain on absorbent paper. In this stage, you can roll your bombolini in caster sugar or once the bombolini cool down a bit, just lightly dust and coat with icing sugar.

One thing good about this recipe is, you don't need the yeast and wait for hours and hours to proof the mixture. And yet resulted so soft and fluffy.

These Bombolini (doughnut balls) are so delicious and yummy! Can you see the texture is so soft, light, moist and fluffy? I wish I can share this out together with you but I can't, so you got to make this yourself.

A Courtesy note:My photos here though are not professional photos but please do not download it and use it without my consent. Thank you!

Friday, 5 August 2016

Do you like pumpkin? And do you know pumpkin is a fruit instead of vegetable. Or just because pumpkin consist of seeds that it is considered as a fruit. Pumpkin is very versatile in cooking. You can used pumpkin as a sweet dessert and you can used it as savoury dish too.

I preferred to use pumpkin as a sweet dessert. I have made Pumpkin Sago Dessert last year and it taste absolutely heavenly good this dessert. Today I am posting a very similar pumpkin sago sweet dessert but this time is more diluted watery.

Bring a
medium pot of water to boil. Once the
water comes to a bubbling boiling, pour all the sago pearls in. Cook the sago in high heat for about 10
minutes or translucent; stirring constantly. (do not worry if
the sago still has white spot in the middle).

Cover the
pot with lid and let it stand for 5-8 minutes for the sago to cook further in
the pot.

Using a
sieve, run the cooked sago thru running water to remove access starch. Pour into a bowl and set aside.

Steam the
dice pumpkin until soft.Drain the pumpkin if there's water in it. While the pumpkin still warm, using a potato masher, roughly mash the pumpkin. (You can blend till fine the pumpkin; but mashing it roughly give some biting texture when you are eating it later). Set aside.

In a clean medium pot, add the 1000ml water, sugar and pandan leaves. Bring to boil till sugar dissolves. Boil another 2-3 minutes to bring out the pandan leaves aroma. Discard the pandan leaves. Add in the mashed pumpkin and sago. Once it's come to a boil, pour in the evaporated milk and immediately removed from heat. Done!Serve warm or cold.

For this dessert, I am using this Australian pumpkin; big portion in flesh with little seeds in it... I love this pumpkin with its dark vibrant in colour though it is quite costly.

One thing good about this sweet dessert is, you can enjoy either warm or cold whichever way you want. Taste absolutely delicious and yummy!

Thursday, 21 July 2016

Breakfast is the first meal of the day and and is also the most important meal of the day. My breakfast is usually light and easy; either cereal or a toast. But if I am in the mood I will make something special too.

Pikelets. You heard of pikelets? Or pancakes should be more familiar to you. Well, the difference between pikelets and pancakes are the pikelets are made smaller in size than pancakes; about 3" to 4" diameter. Pikelets are more widely known to New Zealand, Australia and Britain. The ingredients to make the Pikelets and pancakes are similarly the same; only thing is pikelets are more heavy in texture.

I have made Pikelets for breakfast uncountable times and my niece has even getting good at her hand making this for us all by herself.

Sift the self raising flour, bicarbonate soda and sugar in a medium bowl. Using your hand whisk, gradually stir in the egg and milk whisking to mix into a smooth pouring consistency batter.Lightly oiled a large frying pan and using small to medium heat, drop one tablespoon of batter into the pan; allowing some room for spreading. When bubbles started to appear on top, flip the pikelet over. Cook until it is lightly browned on the other side.Serve warm with butter or your favourite jam or fruits.

I usually love to drizzle honey or maple syrup to my pikelets and with lots of blueberries. Well, Pikelets can be served cold at breakfast time or even at afternoon tea.

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About Me

"Cooking for yourself, your family & friends need not be difficult - get some good ingredients, give yourself the time to get it all ready and the results will be admired and devoured by all.
The simplest way to ensure you get a good meal is to buy the ingredients, prepare them yourself and serve them the way you prefer. There is always time to be good to yourself, so nurture your future health with some great home cooking!